


offer it shelter (offer it songs)

by MagpieCrown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Those Who Slither In The Dark (Fire Emblem), Near Death Experiences, Post-Canon, Sharing Body Heat, art linked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27542023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieCrown/pseuds/MagpieCrown
Summary: “Felix - I’m not feeling well.”Felix whips around so fast he nearly trips in the snow. There is a retort ready on his tongue: ‘I said it shouldn’t be far’, perhaps, or ‘Then maybe you shouldn’t have caught that poisoned blade in the ribs’, but the shape of it dissolves into something horrible and helpless when he looks at Dimitri and realizes that he isn’t, in fact, feeling well.____In which dimilix are lost somewhere in the woods, and Dimitri is poisoned, and Felix is not having a good day whatsoever.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 17
Kudos: 159





	offer it shelter (offer it songs)

**Author's Note:**

> I got possessed by this idea and wrote it in half a night and a day. I have nothing to say for myself.
> 
> I posted art for it at https://twitter.com/royalcorvids/status/1327294150123798529?s=20, and twitter @royalcorvids is also where you can find me in general :3
> 
> Comments are appreciated :)

_it is impossible to carry such venom inside_

_so open the flow of grape dragon blood_

“Felix - I’m not feeling well.”

Felix whips around so fast he nearly trips in the snow. There is a retort ready on his tongue: _‘I said it shouldn’t be far’,_ perhaps, or _‘Then maybe you shouldn’t have caught that poisoned blade in the ribs’,_ but the shape of it dissolves into something horrible and helpless when he looks at Dimitri and realizes that he isn’t, in fact, feeling well.

He is ghostly pale, the pallor approaching the colour of the snow enveloping the world around them. This is a recent development - Felix’s been checking, he _knows_ Dimitri was still ruddy from the exertion and the cold not too long ago - _how_ long ago, though? They’ve been dragging themselves through this blasted forest for what feels like hours by now.

Fuck.

This should not have happened. This was supposed to be a regular, perfectly ordinary, perfectly predictable royal hunt. That Felix was fully prepared to despise the entire time like he always does. Routine. Routine is good when it comes to anything that has to do with the royal outings.

But now they are in the middle of nowhere, alone, weaponless, horseless, _wounded_ \- well, Dimitri is, Felix only got slightly singed from getting dragged through the Warp portal - and they don’t even know _where_ this middle of nowhere is. Which is kind of expected when one takes off in a random direction after fighting off a dozen Slitherers with two swords that immediately got melted into lumps and one hunting bow.

They're probably still in Faerghus, judging by the red Blaiddyd pines and the goddess-damned snow. But that’s about as much as Felix knows.

That - and that the sun is setting. 

And that Dimitri isn’t feeling well.

Felix is walking backwards now, which probably isn’t a good idea given the unknown terrain and, again, the snow, but Dimitri has noticeably slowed down, and his eye is dull on the too-pale face, and instead of saying something stupid like _‘Oh I sure hope the others are alright’_ as if it’s not bloody obvious who they were after he is just - silent. And when he does open his mouth, it’s to say that he is unwell.

Felix has seen him wrench a dagger out of his own chest and walk away without a peep of complaint.

“The Crest should take care of the poison, right.” Felix turns back around, weighs the question down into a certainty. That’s how it’s always worked before. The Crest tides Dimitri over while his body works through the poison at its own pace until either it’s all gone or a healer gets their hands on him.

They were hunting _rabbits,_ for fuck’s sake, hardly the most dangerous prey. Definitely not worth wearing any armour. And whoever in the party carried the vulneraries just in case someone fell off the horse like a moron, it wasn’t him or Dimitri. 

As for Faith - well, Felix was too disgruntled about the prospect of wasting four hours on horseback to store any charges. The mindset was all wrong, or whatever other bullshit excuse he gave himself in that moment.

Which is now working out just splendidly.

Only Dimitri is silent for way too long.

“It - it should, yes,” he says, and his breath fucking _rattles._ “Forgive me, I should not - I’m sure it’ll be fine soon.”

The snow swallows every sound around them. The silence is deafening.

Dimitri’s breath rattles again.

“Fuck,” Felix mutters under his breath. 

They need to find something, and soon. A settlement, a hunting party, anything. They can’t even build a fire like this, and the night will soon fall like a casket lid.

“Pull yourself together and keep walking,” Felix snaps without looking back. “Shouldn’t be too long.”

He has no fucking idea _how_ long it’ll be. If they find anything in time at all.

Dimitri is silent behind him, but Felix still hears him dragging his feet through the snow, so he’s going to count their blessings.

*

The goddess must be outright grinning at them because as the twilight begins to spill through the cracks between the branches, they find a path - and it doesn’t look like an animal one.

...It’s quite possible that she might be cackling evilly instead, though, because Dimitri somehow looks even worse than he did before, the thickening shadows pooling along the lines of his face, sharpening it into a skull.

“Shouldn’t be long,” Felix tells him again, but his voice comes out uncertain even to himself.

Dimitri nods mutely, swaying on his feet where he almost comes to a stop. The hand that’s been pressing against the wound through the clothes now hangs limply by his side. 

Felix nods back - though Dimitri’s eye doesn’t seem to be tracking him - and gets to stomping down the path, praying to whoever might listen that it’s the right direction. If they end up at a laundry spot or a bloody set of pheasant traps or something, Felix will likely lie down and die right there on principle.

It doesn’t help that the path does not look very well-trodden. Only used by one person, maybe. 

Felix glimpses something ahead in the blue murk - a light? Have they found people?

“Fe…” A small sound of Dimitri’s voice. A much louder heavy thud of knees hitting the snow.

Before Felix knows it, he’s on his knees as well with his arms around Dimitri, grunting as the sudden weight bends his spine backwards.

Fuck. Fuck fucking fuck. _FUCK._

Should he try to run to the light and see if someone can help? Maybe there’s a healer, or stretchers to carry him, or…

Dimitri’s head tips onto Felix’s shoulder and he wheezes as if there is not enough air in his lungs, eaten up by whatever has gotten into his blood. Felix’s arms tighten around his shivering form - how long has he been shivering like this? 

No time. There is no time.

“Come on, let’s go.” Felix pushes himself up, braced against Dimitri’s weight, but he is not helping at all, unconscious or close to it. 

Felix curses. Takes a step, praying that Dimitri won’t slip, because if Felix tries to change his grip or if he stumbles and they go down, he doesn’t think he’ll get him up again. Picking Dimitri up and carrying him through the snow would be an ordeal even if he were conscious and assisting, but with his body limp and Felix bloody exhausted, they won’t stand a chance.

So Felix grips him tighter and drags them forwards, step by agonizing step, Dimitri’s strangled wheezing breaths spurring him on.

How did this happen? How did this bloody happen? Such a simple ambush, and they walked right into it like some green recruits, and not, well, veterans of the Unification War. And _why_ won’t Dimitri’s Crest do its damned job?

But very soon, all he can think of is putting one foot in front of the other, Dimitri’s now firmly unconscious body growing heavier by the second.

The light turns out to be coming from a house - a small, lone cottage in the middle of a clearing. No fence that he can see, no gate, just the same one-person path leading up to a dark porch.

There are two steps to the door. Felix very nearly dumps Dimitri on them.

“Help!” he yells instead, hoarse, the icy air tearing into his throat from all the panting. “We need help!”

A muffled sound comes from the house, a dog barking, quiet and louder and then quiet again. A voice, shushing it.

Felix sounds absolutely deranged. If whoever lives in this house is smart, the door will stay locked.

And Dimitri will…

The door swings open.

A woman stands on the doorstep, holding a candle and shielding it from the wind. That’s about as much as Felix gathers in the dark.

“He’s poisoned,” Felix blurts out before the woman can say anything, because if he has to wait Dimitri’s bulk will crush the last of the air out of his lungs and he won’t have enough time to breathe in again. “Healer…”

“I’ll help.” The woman nods and moves aside, the dark doorway yawning open. “Get him inside.”

Felix maneuvers Dimitri through the short dark hallway and into a room, and dumps him onto a bed. The woman directs him in the dark, but he barely hears anything over the rush of blood in his ears and the blasted dog barking its head off somewhere in the house.

He does, however, hear Dimitri let out a quiet moan as he hit the bed. He does not wake up.

“What happened?” the woman asks, lighting more candles and spacing them out around the room. There are bundles of herbs hanging under the ceiling, shelves nailed to the walls that are packed with books and jars full of goddess-knows-what. 

A herbalist, then. For fucking once, they got lucky.

“A poisoned blade,” Felix yanks his gloves off and undoes the clasps of Dimitri’s coat, then unlaces the padded shirt, the tunic, the undershirt, peels the soaked layers aside. The wound seems black in the dancing orange light. Something oozes out of it, too viscous to be blood. “It shouldn’t have gotten this bad, but…” Felix cuts himself off. He isn’t about to tell a complete stranger who they are.

The woman shoots him a look but does not press. “Do you know what kind?”

_‘Something a dark mage would use to try to take out the King of Fódlan,’_ Felix thinks grimly. “No,” he says. “But very strong.”

The woman nods. She is tall - maybe close to Dimitri’s height. Definitely frustratingly taller than Felix. “I have many antidotes. I think I know where to begin.”

“Whatever, just _hurry,”_ Felix snaps. His lip curls: he should probably check his temper around the one person in the room capable of saving Dimitri’s life, now that he’s gone and fucked up protecting it in the first place.

The woman gives him a measured look. “If you’re going to be like this, go sit in the kitchen and let me work. Get the water boiling. Keep Hector company, he’s getting antsy.”

That must be the dog. Felix scowls again, but it’s lost on the woman, who’s by now turned her back to him, checking over Dimitri.

Leaving him alone with her though - every damned Fraldarius instinct is screaming at the mere thought of it.

It’s stupid, Felix tells himself. If she wanted to kill them, all she’d have to do was keep the door locked. Dispose of the frozen corpses in the morning. Feed them to the dog, possibly.

And it’s not like Dimitri can get worse.

Right. Fine. He’ll go sit in the kitchen.

Hector turns out to be the biggest, shaggiest, grossest mutt Felix has ever seen, and by now he must’ve figured out that Felix is not a threat, because instead of a growl or a maw locking around his throat Felix gets slobbered all over. He almost wishes for the maw. Dimitri is going to be ecstatic once he wakes up.

...If. Well. Fuck.

The hearth is going strong, and Felix quickly locates a small pot and a pail of thawed snow and hangs the water to boil. Hector won’t fucking leave him alone throughout, wagging his tail and trying to climb onto his lap even though he must be roughly Felix’s size and _definitely_ not a lapdog. But in between his displays of entirely unwarranted affection, Felix still gets to glance around the kitchen, which reveals...more jars. Dried vegetables. Thick bundles of onions and garlic. A locked chest under the bench, another used as the base for the table.

Interesting.

The kitchen shares the hearth wall with what Felix assumes to be the bedroom, and so he has enough time to stop snooping around once he hears the woman’s footsteps in the hallway.

“How is it?” She enters the kitchen and walks over to check the pot without even glancing at Felix. Her hands are stained with something dark. “Good enough.” She grabs a mug from a cupboard and scoops up some water, then pulls a bundle of herbs out of her apron - Felix notices now that she is wearing one - and crushes them into the pot. “In ten minutes, fill a mug and bring it to me.”

And just like that, she is out again. Felix approaches the pot, waves a hand over it to catch the scent without inhaling a lungful of whatever is cooking in there. It’s pointless in the end: he wouldn’t know most poisons by smell alone anyway.

Felix does as he is told. If _this_ is where she decides to kill Dimitri, then it will, kind of, be by Felix’s hand. Something about it feels fitting, though he doesn’t care to examine, what.

“Hector, _no!”_ the woman says firmly when the mutt tries to follow Felix inside, and to his utter surprise, the dog obeys, plopping his ass down just shy of the doorstep.

Felix walks over to the bed. The woman has tugged the pillows from under Dimitri’s head and moved them to prop up his ankles instead - the boots have been removed - and the wound has obviously been cleaned.

It does not make it look better, though. What was a shallow, clean cut along Dimitri’s ribs low on the left side, now looks angry and tender.

The woman takes the steaming mug, soaks a piece of cloth in the liquid, wrings it out, and carefully places it on top of the wound. Dimitri flinches, turning his head away, makes a soft sound of distress, but otherwise gives no reaction. 

“I’ll get him to drink this as well when he wakes up,” the woman says. “I don’t want to risk it now, in case he chokes.”

“Do you know what poison this is?” Felix asks.

“Not yet.” The woman gets up from the stool by the bed and frowns down at Dimitri. “We’ll have to wait and see how he is in the morning.”

The idea of waiting rests like ashes on Felix’s tongue. Waiting and doing nothing, waiting and hoping, waiting with the outcome resolutely out of his hands.

“Never learned your names.” The woman turns to Felix, wiping her hands on the apron. Her hair is long and wavy, tied into a knot to stay out of her face. Pale. Possibly, blond.

Felix only hesitates for a moment. “Hugo.” A nod in Dimitri’s direction. “Alex.”

“Hm.” The woman glances at Dimitri over her shoulder, then back at Felix. She looks like she is humouring him. But maybe Felix is reading too much into this. “I’m Elaine.”

Only when the name doesn’t tell Felix anything does he realize that he was waiting for it to happen.

But no. Just Elaine.

The exhaustion catches up to Felix all at once, so suddenly he nearly sways. He should be responding - there’s a whole _script_ in place about unexpected guests and their gracious hosts, very Faerghan, very traditional - but they’ve already botched it anyway. Who cares.

“We should rest,” Elaine says when it becomes obvious to her that Felix is not planning on talking. “There’s a couch in the main room. I’ll stay here to keep an eye on him.”

What? No. Unacceptable. “Wait - this is your bedroom, isn’t it,” Felix says. “Where are you going to sleep?”

Elaine gestures at Dimitri. “Well, Alex here gets my bed as the person in distress, so obviously not there. But I have sheepskins and extra pillows, I’ll make do on the floor.”

“I’ll stay here,” the words push themselves hastily out of Felix’s lungs. He is acutely aware of Dimitri’s still form in the unsteady shadows. “You take the couch.”

Elaine gives him a skeptical look. “There’s no need for chivalry. If he needs something in the night, I must know.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Felix says quickly. “Or I’ll wake you up. I’m staying here.”

Elaine seems to consider arguing but in the end just shrugs and yawns, remembering halfway through to cover her mouth. “As you wish. Come, let’s make you a nest.”

And that’s how Felix ends up on the floor on a pile of sheepskins and under a thick quilted blanket. Hector tries to claim the spot for himself while Elaine isn’t looking, but Felix banishes the dog and closes the door.

He unclasps his sword belt with the useless empty sheaths and takes off his coat and boots. Fishes a small dagger out of one of the boots - their only weapon, as far as he is aware - and places it under the top-most sheepskin, within easy reach. Blows out the candles. Then, finally, he lies down.

A slice of pale moonlight crawls across the ceiling. Felix follows the direction of it until his gaze comes to rest on Dimitri’s silhouette, barely visible in the dark.

He is too far away. What if Dimitri gets worse in the night? What if he wakes up scared? What if he is in so much pain he can’t call out?

Felix curses under his breath and gets up again. After some reshuffling, his makeshift bed is moved to a spot right next to Dimitri’s. If he wakes up and hangs his right hand down, the touch will wake Felix up.

Though it is honestly doubtful that Felix is going to sleep. The smart choice here would be to stay up and keep watch.

Felix passes out the moment his head touches the pillow.

*

In the morning, Felix wakes up to Dimitri’s soft noises of pain. He bolts upright and groans at the ache in his lower back - dragging Dimitri through the snow hasn’t done him any favours.

Unimportant.

He pushes himself up and carefully perches on the edge of the bed. Dimitri’s eye is a slit, but the hazy blue seems to be tracking him, which is - oh. So much better than it was before.

“How are you?” Felix leans over to touch Dimitri’s forehead. The motion pulls at his back, making him wince.

The frown deepens as his fingers brush Dimitri’s skin. He’s burning up.

Dimitri slowly parts his lips. His chest rises in preparation to speak.

“Are you...alright?” is what comes out, a brush of air.

Felix stares at him.

“ _Yes,_ you big fool, worry about yourself for once.” Felix parts Dimitri’s unlaced shirt - Elaine has stripped him of the rest of the layers - and traps a hiss behind his teeth when he sees the bandage, stained through with crusted black. The skin around it is blazing hot. _Fu-uck._

Dimitri’s eyes are squeezed shut, a deep frown line creased between his eyebrows. “Hurts.”

Something in Felix breaks in response. “I know,” he says and gets up. “Don’t move. I’ll get Elaine.”

That gets Dimitri’s attention. His eye cracks open again. “Elaine?” he asks, confused.

“A healer,” Felix explains, already halfway to the door. “She’s safe.”

That is not a certainty for now, but Felix isn’t planning to make Dimitri worry about that on top of everything else. That’s his job.

Elaine is puttering about in the kitchen, but leaves whatever it is she’s busy with after throwing one look at Felix’s harried form suddenly appearing in the doorway.

Back in the bedroom, Dimitri is unconscious again.

Elaine lifts the edge of the bandage and releases a breath through grit teeth. “Safe to say it didn’t work,” she mutters.

“What are we going to do now?” Felix asks, trying really hard not to hover.

Elaine rubs her forehead and gets up again, walking over to the rows of jars. “Try something else.”

“What if we don’t have _time?”_

Elaine glares at him over her shoulder. “ _I’m_ working as fast as I can. But we need to let time pass before we know if whatever I give him has any effect.”

“This is useless.” Felix kicks aside his bedding and paces the narrow strip of the floor, door to window, passing between Elaine and Dimitri every time. “Do you know magic? Can you Heal? Or Translocate us?”

Elaine’s shoulders stiffen. “I have no affinity for magic,” she says, her voice even.

Damn. Something else, then. “You have books. That means you trade. Where? I can go there and see if I can get a Translocation spell.”

They don’t have money on them, Felix realizes. Dimitri chronically never carries any, obviously, and Felix - yes, very surprisingly - didn’t think it necessary to bring a coin purse to a rabbit hunt.

Well. He has the dagger. He’ll negotiate, trade it - threaten with it, if he has to. They need to get back to the palace, out of here - wherever ‘here’ is.

By the way. “Where in flames are we?” Felix asks.

Elaine frowns at him over her shoulder. “Uh - the Shipwright Woods? The town I go to trade in is Dwynn - it’s the closest settlement.”

Felix stares back at her.

She raises her hands, a jar clenched in either. “West of the Ilykar River? Tailtean Plains on the other side? Gideon Duchy?”

Oh fuck. Alright. Felix can vaguely place that - he hasn’t spent days poring over the post-war maps the way Dimitri did, but he still remembers some things. Western side of Ilykar - that’s at least three and a half hundred kilometers to Fhirdiad, give or take. And in bloody Gideon of all places, which arguably has the worst roads in Faerghus after Galatea, especially in winter. And even if they get horses somehow - Felix very much doubts that Dimitri can ride.

Back to Translocating. “Where’s this Dwynn then?”

“Two nights north from here, towards the shore,” Elaine responds. 

Fucking hell. There’s no way he’s leaving Dimitri alone for four nights. Which also rules out going there to send a bird to the court - _if_ they have birds bound for Fhirdiad in the first place.

They have no choice. Damn it. Damn it all.

Felix heaves a sigh. “Just - give him something else.”

Elaine raises one of the jars pointedly. “If you’re done distracting me.”

Ashamed, Felix shuts up.

Dimitri half-rouses when Elaine gets to applying her next antidote. He doesn’t seem to be fully there, confused and hurting, but together they still manage to coax him into drinking some of the brew. It smells bitter and burned, and Felix is inwardly glad that Dimitri can’t taste shit, though he still tries to turn his face away from the foul smell.

The day passes with Elaine watching over Dimitri as she pestles and mixes the herbs, and Felix firmly banished to the kitchen on water boiling, food making, and Hector entertaining duty. Felix is not thrilled, although part of him is glad to be doing something tangible. It almost tricks him into feeling like he has some control over the whole shitshow. 

In the evening, Elaine allows him back in while she goes to take care of her sheep, because apparently she keeps sheep, contained to a fenced area behind the cottage. Felix pays little attention to it, too busy searching Dimitri’s face, comparing the rise and fall of his chest to what he remembers from the morning.

He looks...bad. He shivers, and his throat is working in tiny spasms, and the fever has yet to break. Felix’s careful touch lingers on Dimitri’s wrist - if only he could take this fever away, let it flow into him through his fingertips…

Felix shakes his head. Idiotic. 

All of it is idiotic. Stupid Dimitri in this stupid bed, in shambles over a stupid wound so miniscule it might as well have been a papercut. The King of bloody Fódlan, sick in the woods in goddess-damned _Gideon,_ and nobody will even know if he dies here.

Felix’s hands curl into fists so suddenly he retracts them from Dimitri before he can crush his wrist. He grits his teeth until it begins to hurt.

Dimitri can’t die here. That’s not going to happen.

It’s not allowed.

Soon, Elaine retires for the night, but Felix keeps sitting on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring at Dimitri’s face in the darkness, willing him to get better.

*

Dimitri’s fever breaks in the middle of the night, so Felix wakes Elaine up and together they maneuver him around, changing the sweat-soaked sheets. He stays mostly unresponsive, only reacting with the smallest moans when the movement jostles the wound. 

By the morning, the cut looks better, scabbing over with clean, healthy-looking crust. Felix breathes a cautious sigh of relief.

Dimitri still doesn’t wake.

The next several days pass in a blur, with Elaine feeding Dimitri with progressively more and more complicated antidotes and lathering the healing wound in various salves, and Felix basically taking over running the house to spare her the time. He and Elaine barely talk, as they are rarely in the same room, which suits Felix just fine. Whatever her sentiment on the matter is, she keeps it to herself as well, but in general she doesn’t seem very phazed by the two strangers who now occupy her house.

But whatever Elaine is doing, it does not help. Dimitri has been unconscious since their second day here. Felix could’ve made it to Dwynn and back by now. They could’ve been in Fhirdiad by now, maybe, but instead he stayed here, and Dimitri isn’t getting better. Felix agonizes, trying to decide whether he should go to Dwynn now, at least.

And then, Dimitri gets worse.

Felix comes in through the backdoor after knocking the snow off of his boots and puts down the empty pail - one of the things that apparently comes with keeping sheep is making sure that they have access to lukewarm water, and so one of his new duties is breaking up the ice in the trough and pouring hot water into it.

“Hugo?” Elaine calls out from the bedroom, and all thoughts of sheep fly out of Felix’s head at the tone of her voice.

“What’s wrong?” he strides in, taking his coat off.

Hector lifts his head from his paws and lets out a pitiful sound.

“We have a problem,” Elaine says, her eyes fixed on Dimitri. He is swathed in blankets Felix doesn’t remember seeing there when he left the house. “Alex’s body temperature - it’s not right.”

Felix looks closer and notices the tiny shivers wracking what’s visible of Dimitri.

“What do you mean? Is he cold?”

“No - more that he can’t - stay warm.” Elaine turns to Felix, clearly frustrated. “You know how we stay the same temperature more or less? But lizards and frogs grow warmer or colder?”

Felix frowns. “Are you calling him a frog?”

“Essentially.” Elaine looks at Dimitri again. She doesn’t look like she’s joking. “But we aren’t _supposed_ to - be that way. If he becomes as cold as the room…” she trails off and grimaces.

“How do we fix this?” Felix asks, alarmed. “Can we move the bed to the hearth wall? Would that keep him warm?”

“I’ll stoke the fire so the air in the house is warmer, yes, but it works both ways. If it’s _too_ hot, his body won’t handle it either. He’ll cook alive.”

Oh fuck. Oh no. This doesn’t sound good. It sounds very bad, in fact.

“So, again, how do we fix this? How do we get the temperature right?”

Elaine considers his question and then turns to him. “Strip.”

“Pardon me?”

“Body temperature,” she says, as if it justifies everything at once. “I assume yours is somewhere within the normal range.”

Felix gapes at her. Is she suggesting that they what - cuddle?

But - fuck. It makes sense. It really does.

Elaine helps him get Dimitri down to his smallclothes and leaves to tend to the fire, taking Hector with her and giving Felix some privacy. He doesn’t waste time, undressing quickly and crawling under the blankets because if he stops, he will think, and if he thinks, then…

He already got a bit chilled from getting naked in the cool air, but Dimitri’s skin is still a shock against his - Elaine really wasn’t exaggerating. _Seiros,_ he is so cold, and Felix hurries to wrap himself around Dimitri, bringing them chest to chest and tangling their legs together. Dimitri's arm flops, lifeless and leaden, over Felix's waist. 

Felix rubs his right hand down Dimitri’s back, the sword callouses catching on the raised lines of old scars, and the movement pushes Dimitri’s face into the junction of Felix’s neck and left shoulder, the damp breath exhaled in the narrow space between Felix’s skin and the pillow.

Felix shivers. Holds him closer.

He is holding Dimitri. In his arms. Nearly naked.

He hasn’t - they haven’t really had a reason to touch each other in a while, not counting the infrequent brawls. For the longest time, Felix didn’t want to, hated the very idea of being close enough to touch. And now - well. Now they are friends, despite all the wounds they’ve inflicted upon each other throughout the years. They are friends, but Dimitri is the King, which comes with its rules and dressing codes, not to mention Felix’s strong suspicion that the man was _born_ in full formalwear.

And on top of all of that, Dimitri seems to be - horribly, irreparably, inexplicably ashamed of his body. Of the scars or whatever, of the ‘weight’ he’s blessedly been putting on, to the point where he’s tightly laced into high collars and long sleeves even in the middle of the hottest heat waves in Fhirdiad.

Felix sighs. He has nothing to be ashamed of, the oaf. Who cares about the scars? Felix doesn’t. It’s much more important that he is - mostly - whole and, well, generally healthy. Although it took a lot of time to undo the damage that’s been inflicted upon him since before the war - and that work is still far from over.

Felix carefully brushes Dimitri’s bangs out of his face, a thrill running through him at the novelty of it. 

And then there are also whatever terrible whispers Dimitri still sometimes listens to in that big head of his. Telling him how he’s unworthy, and undeserving, and unloved.

Which is the biggest lie Felix could ever imagine. 

He smoothes a hand down Dimitri’s stubbly cheek - it already feels warmer, thank fuck - and shuffles around a bit until he can sneak his left arm under Dimitri’s neck, locking him in a secure embrace. Dimitri’s body is all hard muscle and soft fat, bumps of bones and puckers of scars, and his waist is still infuriatingly, unfairly trim but the pouch of his stomach is pressed up against Felix’s, and his hair is softer than it has ever looked during the war. Touching him is like playing a musical instrument, like going through complicated sword forms.

He is, frankly, beautiful. 

Objectively speaking.

Felix presses his cheek against Dimitri’s temple, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment.

“All good?”

Felix starts at the sound of Elaine’s voice - he didn’t notice her enter the room. He checks if the sudden motion has jostled Dimitri, but he doesn’t seem to react. “How long should I stay like this?” he grumbles.

“Until Alex’s body can self-regulate again,” Elaine sighs. “I’ve stoked the fire, it should get warmer here soon. And I’ll check my books, see if anything in there can help. You can - take breaks, of course. If you need to stretch or do anything else. But tell me in advance so I can make sure the fire is going strong.”

Felix nods. Feels Dimitri’s hairs catch on his own stubble. His hold on Dimitri tightens.

“Oh, right, one more thing. Hector!” Elaine calls; the dog comes bounding in. “It’s your lucky day, buddy. The day you’re allowed on the bed.”

“What,” Felix lifts his head at the same time the dog jumps on the bed, landing right on his ankles. “What?”

The bed is quite big, of course, as Elaine is a tall woman, but so is _Dimitri,_ who also happens to be much _bulkier,_ and with him and Felix in bed there’s already barely any space left.

“Well, you can’t cover all of the surface,” Elaine reasons as Hector happily squeezes himself between the wall and Dimitri’s back, lying down with a contented huff. “And he’s only a little bit warmer than we are. It’ll help.”

“Right.” Felix clings to Dimitri as Hector gets comfortable and the motion nearly tips him over the edge of the bed.

The worst part is, she _is_ right. And Dimitri gets to hang out with the mutt anyway. Everyone wins - except for Felix, but who’s counting?

“Very well.” Elaine walks over to fix some of the blankets and pat Hector on the head, then steps back again. “I’ll go do my research. Holler if you need anything.”

Felix grunts in acknowledgement, and Elaine leaves the three of them alone.

*

This is agony, Felix decides.

For several days, he takes only the most necessary of breaks, his skin itching to get back under the covers the moment he leaves. Not missing Dimitri’s touch - strictly because the thought of him cooling down too much is outright terrifying.

Felix’s brand new recurring nightmare is the one where he wakes up in the morning and discovers that Dimitri has died during the night, leaving a corpse to grow cold and rigid in Felix’s arms.

He wakes up multiple times every night, desperately paranoid, checking Dimitri’s heartbeat and breathing, rubbing hands over his chilly body, making sure all the blankets are in place.

And other than that, he spends the days just...staring. Just holding Dimitri and staring at his face, counting every tiny scar and every pale freckle, or rearranging him so that he doesn’t develop sores from lying in the same position, or propping him up and turning his head to the side so that he would drink - Elaine’s been cooking broths and pureeing soups ever since they realized that he wasn’t going to wake up anytime soon, so solids were out of question. So Felix’s been doing all that, and also staring, because if Dimitri is unconscious he can’t stare back, or notice Felix staring and call him out, or ask anything stupid like _‘Why are you staring at me, Felix?’_ or _‘Do you like me, Felix?’_ or any other such nonsense.

Not that he would ever ask that. And not Felix would have anything to tell him even if he did.

Felix’s mind, somehow both under- and overstimulated, drifts. His world narrows down to this bed, and the cocoon of blankets, and Dimitri’s body, heavy and limp and cool in his arms, his ribs expanding slowly with every shallow breath.

*

Dimitri gets worse again.

Elaine keeps mixing antidotes, and some buoy him briefly, making them giddy with hope, and then bring him crashing down again. He gets fevers, rashes, a cough that knocks around in his chest like an animal searching for an exit. Seizures that never fail to scare Felix out of his mind as he clutches him tightly and waits for the fits to pass, squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden sting in them. 

They give Dimitri hurried sponge baths with hot water before Elaine can put ointments on his sore skin, and he’s constantly sticky and sweaty and disgusting, but Elaine still doesn’t know how to fix his temperature, and Felix can’t leave their nest. Doesn’t want to. 

Elaine moves in, making herself a bed on the floor out of the same sheepskins Felix has previously used. One night, he comes to with an aborted start and tightens his arms around Dimitri, expecting a seizure, but turns out that he was awoken by Elaine’s soft humming. She sits behind the headboard, leaning her elbows on it, her hand brushing gently through Dimitri’s hair.

Felix doesn’t recognize the tune. He is too worn out to be angry or weirded out, so he tucks Dimitri’s head under his chin and goes back to sleep.

And then, one day - Felix has lost count of them - something changes. Dimitri gets another seizure, and it’s horrible that they no longer surprise Felix. But this time Dimitri doesn’t bounce back after it ends. He stays weak and slack and faintly grey, and no matter how much Felix rubs him, his skin is clammy and cool.

“Elaine?” Felix calls, panic rising in him like a wave, a terrible feeling of dread. Then, louder, “Elaine!”

He pushes himself up and jams a finger under Dimitri’s chin, shudders out a sigh when a pulse flutters under his touch. But the relief is short-lived.

Dimitri’s face is sallow and thin, the face of a living corpse - and for a moment Felix’s mind is eclipsed by the looming shadow of a ruined cathedral, but he shakes it hurriedly off. He is nothing like he was back then - when he was fighting and snarling and so viciously _present._ Right now, Dimitri’s mouth is slack, and his breaths are short and insubstantial, an afterthought, something to be easily discarded at any moment.

“What’s wrong?” Elaine is in the room and at the bedside in an instant, and Felix turns to her in panic and reads in the way her face falls the confirmation of what he himself thinks that he was hoping he wouldn’t see.

Dimitri is dying.

“No.” Felix’s voice is raw as he turns back to Dimitri, grabs his clammy face with both hands. “No!”

He needs to wake up. _He needs to wake up._

Someone’s harsh breaths are too loud to let Felix _think,_ and then he realizes it’s his own chest heaving. The world dims around the edges, and only Dimitri stays startlingly real in the middle even as he shivers his way out of it.

“We need to do something,” Felix pleads with Elaine. She is pale, her eyes wide and unseeing. “Elaine! Don’t just stand there!”

“Oh,” she covers her mouth. Sways. “Oh, I think I know what it is. Oh goddess.”

Felix’s blood was already ice, but now it somehow runs even colder. “What?”

But it’s as if Elaine doesn’t hear him, leaning over Dimitri instead, brushing damp hair away from his face. “I’m so sorry, my darling,” she tells him. “I’m so sorry.”

“What the fuck?” Felix hisses. “What _is_ it?”

“It’s not poison.” Elaine’s voice sounds broken. She is still looking at Dimitri, her face full of sorrow. “It’s a hex, it’s attacking his-- no antidote will help here.”

“A _hex?”_ Felix repeats, incredulous. Is that why his Crest didn’t work? “What do we do? What _can_ we do?”

They’ve been going about it all wrong. This entire fucking time, they’ve been doing nothing to help. He withered away right before their eyes. Right in Felix’s arms.

Felix was right to feel helpless - because he fucking _is._

“There’s something that might work,” Elaine grimaces. “But it’s - it’s _bad._ He might still die.” She turns her head to Felix, and her grey eyes are bottomless and ancient. “ _You_ might die as well.”

“If we do nothing, he’s dying for sure.” Felix is _this_ close to punching something, anything to make this conversation go by sooner so they can act. There is a _solution._ This is _straightforward._ “Sounds obvious to me.”

“Did you not hear me?” Elaine raises her voice. “The thing that might help - if it doesn’t work, you both die. Not just him. You as well.”

_‘I’ll die either way,’_ Felix thinks furiously.

It doesn’t matter. Dimitri has to live. Fódlan needs him. His people need him.

Felix needs him.

“Just do it, do it, we have no time!” he urges Elaine. Why is she still hesitating? “He’s dying, _please,_ Elaine!”

Elaine’s face crumples, the last of composure broken. She scrubs a hand over it, closes her eyes, forces out a sharp sigh. 

“Alright. I’ll do it.” She chews on her bottom lip, her eyes firmly on Dimitri again. “I need to get ready - be right back - stay with him.”

Felix doesn’t even bother sneering at her retreating back, throwing himself down on the bed again instead. As if he could possibly do literally anything else.

He gathers Dimitri in his arms, tucks Dimitri’s cold nose into his neck. He feels so - it’s ridiculous, but he feels so small now. Fragile, which isn’t a word Felix thought he would ever use when describing Dimitri. He feels like he could unravel at any moment, and Felix squeezes him tighter, holds him as close as he can, as if he could press Dimitri into his chest and keep him there until he’d be strong enough to stand on his own again.

Because he _is_ strong. So fucking strong.

And Felix has failed him. Left him to fight this alone.

It shouldn’t have happened like this. They shouldn’t have fallen into the portal, shouldn’t have fought the Slitherers that awaited on the other side, shouldn’t have ended up here. Dimitri should be back at the palace, listening to his petitioners and signing orders and staying up too late reading up on everything he’s never had time to learn. He should be - riding that bitchy horse of his, and sparring, and going on those dumb walks that Dedue has insisted upon after Dimitri had the big breakdown a year into his rule. He should be - kissing babies. Blessing fields. All that nonsense.

He should be happy. He should be safe. Not - not here, held together by the circle of Felix’s arms, and slipping away all the same.

What was it even, the last thing Felix’s said to him? Snarling at him to move, to shut up, to stop complaining.

Felix was terrified out of his mind, and he took it out on Dimitri, and now Dimitri will die thinking that it was the truth.

Felix’s hands are shaking. He wills them to stop, but they won’t listen. Why won’t they listen.

“I’m sorry, Dimitri,” he whispers into his hair. He doesn’t know how to put the rest of it into words. But Dimitri would understand all the same. He always understood Felix, somehow, even when Felix didn’t want him to.

Elaine comes back in, ushers Hector outside, closes the door. She doesn’t have anything with her this time, no herbs or brews or salves. There is a steely glint in her eyes, a manic energy in her every movement.

“Let him go,” she says.

Is she crazy? “No.”

“Let him _go,_ Hugo,” Elaine repeats. “We’ll need space, I don’t have time to argue with you.”

Something in her voice makes Felix listen, and he gives Dimitri one last squeeze and slides his arm from under his neck. At Elaine’s direction, he scoots away as far as he can, until they are no longer touching each other. His skin buzzes, too cold, aching to reach out for him again.

“Listen very carefully,” Elaine speaks again, her voice low and urgent. “The hex is corroding his Crest - that’s why he isn’t healing. And there is no way to fight it from the inside, either. Our only chance is to link _your_ Crest to his body. This way, the undamaged energy of it _might_ stop the corrosion. If it’s not too late.”

What? Felix shakes his head; her words barely reach him through the thick fog of panic. “How are you going to do it?” he asks.

Elaine flexes her fingers; something crackles along them. Didn’t she say that she doesn’t use magic? “I will unlock the currents first. And that’s going to hurt. _A lot._ Once that’s done, I’ll interlock them into one grid, and then, we wait and pray.”

This sounds like a terrible plan. It sounds, frankly, like mad ravings. But it’s their only shot. “Alright,” Felix nods. “Do it. I’m ready.”

Elaine nods back, and steps forward, and presses a hand to Felix’s forehead.

The world explodes in agony.

_Everything hurts._ Everything in his body, his mind, everything beyond - the Crest rampages in his blood, burning up every vessel, scorching through every tissue, turning him inside out. Felix hears someone screaming - recognizes his own voice, ragged and torn. There is nothing but pain. It is all-encompassing, and all-consuming, and it does not let up.

Until it does, increment by tiny increment. Until it lets him comprehend enough that when he turns his head, he recognizes the two people - one in bed, the other leaning over him - and watches Elaine press her other hand to Dimitri’s brow.

Dimitri doesn’t scream - he is too weak. He doesn’t writhe like Felix apparently did through the worst of it - his limbs are tingling now, overstrained - but he still jerks and flinches in a futile attempt to escape, and his mouth parts around a wheeze, and goddess, the crying noises he is making, small and pitiful and so miserable, but Elaine won’t stop, won’t lift her hand even though it hurts him so much, doesn’t she understand how much it hurts?

She was smart to start with Felix. There’s no way he would’ve just stood aside and let her do it otherwise.

“I know,” he hears Elaine whisper, soothing, just on the edge of his awareness. “I know, my dear, I’m so sorry.”

The world goes blurry. Felix can feel himself slipping away. He curls his fingers into consciousness, but it feels so unsteady, so gossamer.

Is he going to die before she can even link them? Let Dimitri down one last time?

And then Elaine looks to him, and reaches out, and places his hand on top of Dimitri’s - and Felix’s world turns itself inside out again.

He feels - oh, it’s indescribable. The golden, blinding shine of the Blaiddyd Crest against the molten metal orange of his own, but over that shine the terrible, rotting sickness, the stale coldness, the erosive plague. Felix is hit with such sudden and powerful nausea that if he had any strength in him left at all, he would throw up.

Is this how Dimitri is feeling? How he’s been feeling all this time?

_‘Felix - I’m not feeling well.’_

The underestimation of the millennium.

Oh, Dimitri…

Felix tries to curl his fingers around Dimitri’s, tries to open up more, to let more of it in, let his Crest fight it, let it be consumed, just as long as Dimitri is free of this plague.

A steadying hand on his chest. “Don’t push it.” Elaine’s tired voice. “You won’t help him. You’ll only hurt yourself.”

Felix pushes anyway, gags at the rotting taste - not just in his mouth, it feels like his entire mind is rotting, like his blood is nothing but ashes. His fingers twitch again, but he is too weak. Too weak to help.

He closes his eyes. The darkness beneath all the sickness is velvety, welcoming. Maybe he’ll fight it better while he’s asleep. Maybe he can still help.

The darkness opens up, inviting Felix in. Curls around him like a loving embrace.

In that final moment right before Felix passes out - a voice, so small, so rough after days and days of unconsciousness. A voice Felix feared he’d never hear again.

“...Mom?”

*

*

*

Felix wakes up, but when he opens his eyes, nothing greets him but darkness. There is no moon, no candles, nothing.

In that pitch black, a golden thread. He reaches for it. His hand finds skin. The gold sparkles in response.

Dimitri?

The skin feels warm. It hasn’t felt this warm in days.

Felix is so nauseous. His insides are twisting around each other, and his head is pounding, and fucking _flames_ he feels sick - or is it Dimitri? Is it his sickness? Or is it _theirs_ now?

Felix drags himself across the endless chasm. There are furs piled on top of him, blankets, quilts, but he pulls them impatiently aside with his weak hands, pushes himself on until he can feel Dimitri’s body heat against his skin.

It’s warm. He’s _warm._

Felix feels around - Dimitri is lying on his back, and goddess, he is still so terribly ill. The rot sits so deeply in him, its roots are so strong.

Felix stifles a sob and drags himself closer again, until he can half-drape himself over Dimitri’s chest. There is no need for it - his temperature is fine again - but Felix has to do it anyway.

He is so blessedly warm. Not with fever - just warm. Alive.

Felix presses his lips to Dimitri’s shoulder - his skin feels even warmer this way, so good - rummages in his mind. He doesn’t remember much - remembers Elaine saying something about linking them together, then the pain, the dizziness, the sickness - remembers Dimitri’s cold hand underneath his own before passing out.

Hm. Doesn’t matter. It’ll come back to him.

Did it work though?

Whatever they did - the sickness Felix feels is not his own. He knows it now, knows how firmly it sits in Dimitri’s chest, courses through his blood. Knows how his own blood fights it in turn, lending its strength to Dimitri’s.

But did they do it in time?

Or is Dimitri - are they both going to die now?

Has Felix just consigned his life to darkness?

If he dies here, he’s not - he’s not going to see his friends again. Won’t see Sylvain finally get his shit together and propose to Ingrid. Won’t take up Annie on her invitation to teach a workshop on Thoron. Won’t return that book to Ashe that he borrowed ages ago and still hasn’t read.

Won’t stand at Father’s and Glenn’s gravestones back home. Empty graves, of course, but there is something to be said about carving the names of your loved ones into the ancient flesh of the earth.

If they die here, nobody will even know where to look for their bodies. Elaine won’t know who to write to. There’ll be just - two more silent marble watchers, one for each family crypt.

Felix doesn’t regret agreeing to this. Would do it again, he knows it. Without hesitation. Not because he is a Fraldarius.

But because Dimitri’s skin is warm under his lips. Because everything about him makes Felix want to do stupid things, like dancing or singing from the rooftops. Because Dimitri is the best man he knows. And the world will go on without him, of course - it has gone on without so many great people already - but it will be so much poorer for it.

Felix will not allow that to happen, if he can help it. And if he can’t - well.

Please, let this work.

*

Felix wakes up again in the morning. Golden sunlight bathes Dimitri’s profile in its gentle rays, haloes his hair around his face. Something swells in Felix at the sight, so powerful and bright that it startles him awake, and everything is gold, and beneath the border of skin their blood flows liquid and thick. 

No more ashes. No more rot.

It worked.

Felix snakes and arm around Dimitri, smothers a sigh in his shoulder. He lives. Dimitri _lives,_ and Felix could cry from relief. 

“I love you,” Felix whispers into his skin instead, smiles into it, kisses it. “I love you.”

Dimitri’s chest stops moving. A cold shock of surprise, a thick wave of excitement and fondness and _relief_ and something bright and golden and triumphant again, and Dimitri’s arm comes up around Felix’s shoulders, and his chest rumbles right into Felix’s heart and Dimitri speaks.

“I love you too, my dear.”

Felix whips his head up so quickly he nearly dislodges Dimitri’s arm, but he holds on, and his eyes are open - one blue, one pale - and his mouth is upturned in a small, soft smile.

Dimitri's mouth tastes atrocious, and his lips are horribly chapped, but it's frankly the best kiss Felix has ever had - from sheer relief, or maybe from all these shared _feelings_ churning like a whirlpool, which, weird, but probably something he could see himself getting used to, or maybe from the simple fact that this is Dimitri, and maybe this is how it was always supposed to be. The golden feeling surges and swells like a symphony and settles between them, around them.

Then, they rest.

*

“I had the strangest dream,” Dimitri says softly, half-asleep.

His fingers are carding idly through Felix’s loose hair, and there’s nothing Felix’d like more than just to stay that way, in peace and _quiet,_ because they are both still so exhausted and could use some time to recover.

But then again, Dimitri has been silent for far too long.

“Mm?” Felix grunts.

“I dreamed of my mother. She was here.” A pause. “She looked...older. And so sad.”

Felix tenses, suddenly wide awake.

Just before he passed out - hasn’t Dimitri…

Tall, blond hair, no affinity for magic. Elaine. Just like Elaine Thalia Terfel, Lambert’s wife. Dimitri’s mother. 

The one who died from the plague when Dimitri was three years old.

Felix never mentioned their Crests to her.

“Felix?” Dimitri asks, worry bleeding into the calm between them - did he feel Felix’s sudden alarm? Oh, this is going to be inconvenient. “Is everything alright?”

“Mhm,” Felix worms his way out of Dimitri’s embrace and scrambles off the bed, looking around for his clothes. “I need to - the outhouse. I’ll be right back. Try to sleep.”

Outside the door, he quickly pulls his clothes on. His dagger is in the right pocket of his overcoat - and Felix doesn’t remember putting it there.

He finds Elaine - the creature wearing Elaine’s skin - in the backyard, as she is packing something away into a man-drawn sleigh. She is wearing a thick coat, fur boots, a hat with a wide brim. A harness sits low on her waist.

“I know what you are,” he says. The dagger hangs loosely from his hand, just a warning for now.

Elaine straightens up. Turns around, slowly.

“Felix,” she greets him with a sigh.

Not pretending to be ignorant, then. Felix feels a grudging respect. “So you knew who we were right from the start, too.”

“Of course.” Elaine turns back to her sleigh, unspools a length of rope to tie it over the cover. “I can - sense people’s Crests. And even if I didn’t - your clothes are a dead giveaway. I live in isolation, not ignorance.”

“Then what do you want from us?” Felix growls, stepping down from the back porch. Tests the packed snow under his feet. “All this theater - what’s your goal?”

Elaine has the gall to look confused. “My goal?”

“We get attacked by Slitherers - and then get dropped in the middle of the forest where we find you, another Slitherer? Masquerading as his dead mother, no less? You think I’m so stupid I’ll believe that this is a coincidence?”

“Felix - are you hearing yourself?” Elaine raises her eyebrows, and flames, how hasn’t Felix figured it out before? Dimitri always does the exact same thing. “If I were really out to kill you or - or do something else, why would I even let you in? Why would I house you under my roof for weeks? That’s a rather elaborate ruse, don’t you think?”

“And linking the Crests? For your research?”

Now, her eyebrows knit together into a look of consideration, making Felix grit his teeth. “Hm. That one _would_ make sense,” she concedes. “But still - isn’t it too convoluted?”

“Slitherers play convoluted games,” Felix hisses.

Elaine sighs and finishes tying off the last knot on the sleigh. “You have no reason to believe me, I know, especially not since the war. But I’ll say it anyway: I mean you no harm.”

Felix scoffs. “Right.”

“I’ve lived here for _years!”_ Elaine gestures at the house, the yard. Well-built, well-loved. “I’ve never hurt anyone. I just want to live out my life in peace.”

Felix’s hand tightens on the dagger. “Why?”

“It’s - a long story,” Elaine looks away. Her face is unreadable. “And not a happy one. I’m not sure who I was before they gave me - _her_ memories. I remember bits and pieces, but they are muddy, like a very bad dream.” She tugs on the knots, though Felix has _seen_ her tighten them all at least once already. “There was a plan in place, I think - to take over the whole royal family, one after another. But when I woke up as her, I - I _felt_ everything that she had felt. Something must have gone wrong - I felt more than I was supposed to. I knew I couldn’t go through with it, so I ran away.”

Felix narrows his eyes. “Just like that?”

“No. Not ‘just like that’,” she sighs, bitter. “Elaine - the real Elaine - she really did die in the plague. I was going to replace her on her deathbed and become the ‘miraculous recovery’. But - here we are.”

A chill runs up Felix’s spine when he imagines how it would go if their plan worked out. Elaine, Lambert, Dimitri - all replaced. All dead. Unmourned, in nameless graves. He looks at Elaine again: her face is pinched, pained.

“I could never hurt my family - even though they weren’t mine,” she continues. “So when you brought him to me - I had to help. Elaine was good with herbs, and I got that from her alongside her memories, though it cost me a lot of my magic proficiency. But…” She winces, apologetic. “I fell too far out of the loop to recognize the work of my...former associates. Not until it was almost too late, and I am deeply sorry for that.”

She takes the long reins of the sleigh, clips them to the harness, tests the clips. Hector pricks his ears and gets up, shaking off the snow.

“Where are you going?” Felix asks.

“To Dwynn. I’ll stay with a friend for a fortnight. You’ll have time to recover and leave.”

“You don’t want him to see you,” Felix realizes.

He wonders what she had felt when Dimitri called out to her, delirious, on the brink of death.

Elaine winces. “I don’t think it would be a good idea. He isn’t my son - but he is, too, and I…” She shakes her head, pulls on her mittens. “It’s - complicated. I don’t want to hurt him.”

Felix wonders if she wants him to make the decision for her.

But he - doesn’t know. He doesn’t.

What would _he_ want if his mother suddenly came back from the dead? Not her, but someone like her? An impostor who would hum lullabies to him? 

Felix doesn’t know.

After a pause, Elaine shifts on her feet. “Right. I guess we’ll be going. Come on, buddy.” She whistles to Hector, and he barks in response and quickly bullies the sheep out of the yard and into the woods. Elaine watches them for a moment, then turns back to Felix and gives him a small smile. “For what it’s worth - I’m glad he has you.”

Feli huffs. “I don’t care for your blessing.”

“I know you don’t,” she smiles again. “But it’s what she’d say as well. Farewell, Felix.”

Felix is quiet as she walks over to the gates, closes and locks them carefully behind herself.

“Wait,” he says suddenly; watches Elaine turn back, surprise plain on her face. “Maybe you should - send him a letter. Someday.”

Elaine searches his face, then gives him a slow nod. “Maybe I will.”

And then she leaves, following the gentle tinkling sound of the sheep bells. Felix stays in front of the porch, staring after them, until they disappear among the trees. Then, he walks back inside.

In the bedroom, Dimitri seems to have dozed off again. Which is good, though they should probably eat something next time they wake up. And also - talk about all of this. In some capacity.

Later.

Felix quickly shucks his clothes and climbs back into bed, shuddering in delight at the warm air under the blankets, the warmer planes of Dimitri’s stomach and chest. Dimitri gives a grunt of surprise and affront, trying to wriggle away from Felix’s cold hands before he is even fully awake, and Felix smothers a laugh into his breastbone, noses at and kisses the skin he suddenly finds under his lips, thrilled to be able to do this, thrilled to be allowed.

The conversation with Elaine still sits heavy on his mind. But - from this point onwards, nothing about it is up to him. And if Elaine decides to write Dimitri a letter and turn his life upside down - Felix fully intends to be by his side when that happens. Right now, all that matters is that Dimitri’s going to be alright. 

Felix’s hands are quick to warm up, and soon Dimitri settles again and winds his sleep-heavy arms around him, rests their solid, reassuring weight on Felix's shoulders and waist. Together, they drift off again.


End file.
